221 Years, 102 Minutes
by forever-ioand-ever
Summary: Death is in no way made easier when you know you'll make it out alive. In fact, immortality makes it all the more difficult. (September 11th)


_So, as you all know, the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks recently passed, and out of nowhere the thought occured to me: what was Henry doing that day? Seeing as he is an immortal, you might figure out where my cruel mind thought to put him... I tried my best to be both accurate and sensitive in my portrayal of events that day, but I put this disclaimer here now: This is a story about September 11, 2001. It will get emotional. If this would be a problem for you for any reason, I would much rather you not read it than drudge up memories you'd rather forget._

* * *

He was always early to the office, and today was no different. He drew up the blinds so he could watch as the sun slowly rose from the depths of the East River and peeked through the manmade Manhattan skyline, scattering vivid orange light down the streets and avenues of the city he'd come to love. The view was perfect from his office; he'd planned it that way. It had always been his dream to work here, where the windows were the only thing separating him from the great big world.

It wasn't the glamorous sort of job that one associated with the prestigious building, but a mere means to an end that, were he honest with himself, were likely not to happen. Everyone came to this city for a chance under the bright lights of the Broadway stages; most of them ended up under the dim lights of a late-night bar. At least he had landed a decent serving job, even if it did require early mornings every day. He liked early mornings.

He turned from the view and walked behind the podium that stood by the front doors of the restaurant. From a shelf beneath the slanted surface, he pulled a small notebook and flipped it open to that day's reservations. He familiarized himself with the names, tried to imagine the faces of the more prestigious of the guests, and hoped inside that perhaps one of these men or women would be his ticket to the stage.

{*****}

He hadn't quite figured out what to do with his life. And for having been alive almost a score and two centuries, this was an unexpected problem to have.

Henry was in limbo, as he often was in recent years. After Abe had brought him back from the brink of eternal drunkenness and gotten him back on his feet, Henry dipped into one of his many bank accounts and went on a journey of self-discovery through Western Europe. He hadn't planned on returning permanently to the city, but an intangible something wouldn't leave him at peace until he returned to the island of Manhattan.

He'd just returned to the city he'd called home for so long, moved in with the man he called family. It was so hard on Henry, seeing his son grow older than him, physically speaking, yet it was even more difficult to leave the only family he had left. If there was one thing that trumped Henry keeping his secret, it was loyalty to the people he loved most.

He'd begun working with Abe at the antique shop he'd opened shortly after Henry left for Europe. They had agreed that Henry should probably sell off some of the old furniture and knick-knacks that he'd collected over the centuries, but Henry knew his sentimentality would get the best of him and the store would end up a museum because of his staunch refusal to sell anything with even the slightest memory attached to it, so he'd decided it best to get away from all of the strong memories of the city.

He was surprised with Abe's choice of location for the store; in their countless moves about the city, Henry and Abigail had managed to never move to this corner of Manhattan. The first time he found himself back in the waters of the East River, though, Henry was grateful for the proximity of his son's home to the waters.

This particular day, Henry and Abe were traveling to the western side of the island for an estate sale; the motivating force for the journey being the younger of the two.

"Two hundred years worth of my belongings aren't enough?" Henry asked incredulously. His son looked up from the newspaper that always joined the two men at the breakfast table.

"Now that you won't let me sell any of your junk I do." Henry moved to defend himself, but Abe refused to let him. "Might I remind you how many sales you've interrupted in just the past week?"

"Forty-seven," Henry sighed in defeat. "Abraham, I simply do not trust the people of this generation to proplery care for and respect these pieces."

"Hey! I'm from this generation, thank you very much!" Abe folded up the paper and rose from the table. Grabbing his keys from the small shelf next to the stair, he looked back to his father. "So, you coming or not?"

{*****}

Jo Martinez simply did not want to wake up. Her alarm had been going off for some time now, and she'd dutifully hit the snooze button every nine minutes for the past half-hour. At long last, she realized that she must face the inevitable, and reluctantly pulled herself out of bed and into the uniform she'd been issued at the beginning of training. Her body ached in protest of her every move. Training had been hell yesterday.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Jo reminded herself that the first day was _meant_ to be hell, to weed out everyone too weak for police work. And Jo Martinez was no weakling.

She pulled her brown curls into a low ponytail and assessed herself in the bathroom mirror. It wasn't her best look, but beauty didn't get you anywhere when you were trying to kick down a door or fight off a physical assailant. In fact, beauty might actually _cause_ the latter. Anyhow, she wasn't going for pretty, she was going for "just as tough as the boys, if not more." The fact that she was one of only four women in her training course of fifty motivated her all the more.

Before she left the studio apartment she'd rented on a prayer and the tips of kind patrons, she poured herself a cup of coffee—black for best effect, then all but sprinted to the subway station that would take her to the NYPD training facility in Queens.

{*****}

"Everyone to your posts! Breakfast starts in promptly seven minutes!"

The young man was, of course, already at his post, as he always was. He flipped the reservation book back to its first page of the day and read the names of the first party silently to himself. A coworker unlocked the doors and the young man straightened his posture. He plastered on a smile, only slightly exaggerated for effect, and tweaked his slightly off-kilter bow tie as he waited for the seven o'clock reservations to arrive.

They soon did, and the man found himself guiding the faces of famed names to various white-clothed tables overlooking the East River and the now-risen sun. After a string of "Enjoy your breakfast, sir"s, he snuck back into the kitchen hopefully grab an overcooked egg or some burnt sausage that simply _wouldn't_ be served to the prestigious guests.

"Caleb! Just for you, my man!" an assistant chef a few years older than him passed over a plate of bacon and eggs with a smile.

"Thanks a bunch, Donny," Caleb grinned. "You didn't burn these on purpose, did you?"

Donny replied only with an ambiguous shrug of his shoulders, which Caleb took as a confession of guilt. He devoured the specially burnt food as quickly as possible, whilst chefs around him cooked more and more at an even faster pace. When he was finished, he motioned to Donny to give his white dress shirt a quick once-over for any unseen grease stains. Donny nodded in the affirmative; Caleb was clean. Taking a quick drink of water to wash down the lingering bacon flavor in his mouth, Caleb walked back out to the restaurant having barely been missed.

{*****}

Only when they arrived at the trove of potential purchases otherwise known as the Edmund J. Farland Estate Sale did Henry understand why his son so desperately wanted to come.

The only heir to the Farland estate was welcoming the various antiques dealers and other shoppers to the sale with appropriate sorrow, but clearly just the appropriate sorrow. If Henry's memory served him correctly, Edmund J. Farland had never married, but then again, he'd only met the man in passing, and that was fifty years prior. But Farland didn't strike Henry as the kind to marry, and if he had, he hadn't much care for his family. Business, only business, was Farland's focus, as it was of more and more citizens of this bright city.

So it made sense that Farland's apparent daughter was not terribly distressed over the loss of her already absent father. And the fact that she was just around Abraham's age clicked the final puzzle piece into place. That, and Abe's offhand whispered comment just after she had welcomed them into the parlor.

"I swear, if this is your way of getting over Maureen _again_ …" Henry chided.

"Oh, _dad_ , I am totally over her." Abe whispered, the word _dad_ muffled enough to sound equally like _damn_ if one wasn't listening all that closely.

"No matter what this is, I am not being your wingman to woo a grieving woman. Besides, I have a conference to attend."

Abe looked up at his father, brow raised. "What do you mean, you have a conference to attend? Last I checked, you were a new immigrant from Amsterdam who is for all intents and purposes penniless."

"Yes, I am, technically. However, because my name is on the records of the Morgan Shipping Company, acquired by Messageries Maritimes in 1864, now known as CMA CGM, I have been invited to an important financial conference at Windows on the World, and I plan not to miss it."

"You, Henry Morgan, willingly riding an elevator _107_ floors up to a _business conference_ for a company that hasn't existed since the Civil War? How did you even stay connected with the company for all this time?"

"I have found that I am not very much of a twenty-first century man, Abraham, and I must remedy that. Being in the presence of today's top financiers shall give me a perspective on the business consensus of this generation. I also feel that as an adopted New Yorker, I should dine at the highest restaurant in the city at least _once_ in my life. And as for my connection to the company, I update it just as I update any of my other files. You do realize that profits from the Morgan Shipping acquisition are what I've been living on for the past decade?"

"Nobody suspects anything about the owner of a company acquired in the 1860's still drawing money out of them?"

"During the acquisition, I _may_ have added a legal clause granting the Morgan descendants eternal financial stability," Henry said evasively, rising from his seat and grabbing his suit jacket from the back of the chair.

"And when were you going to let me in on this little trust fund of yours?" Abe asked incredulously.

But Henry was already gone and walking the ten blocks south to the World Trade Center.

{*****}

At promptly 8:00 AM, Martinez was in line with the rest of the trainees, or at least the forty who had decided to stick it out. Martinez—simply her last name now that she was in training. _So militaristic,_ she thought as she stood rigidly at attention. _At least they're not calling us maggots._

After about a half hour of the strictest congratulations-you've-made-it-this-far pep talk she'd ever heart in her twenty years of life, Martinez and the rest of the trainees were surprised when they were left at ease with no further instructions. The officers in charge seemed to be slightly preoccupied with something, but no so much that it concerned the trainees. They, for the moment, were getting the day off—no one was going to complain.

"Wonder what's up with them?" A man about Jo's age asked, intimating his glance at the officers quietly discussing something across the room. She looked up at the taller man and shrugged.

"Dunn. Hank Dunn." He smiled, a very charming smile, if she thought about it enough… _One of the guys, Jo. You're just one of the guys._

"Martinez. Jo Martinez." _Okay, maybe a little_ too _one-of-the-guys…_ "I honestly have no idea. I thought we were supposed to be doing another intense workout session or something."

"Maybe it's a test of patience?" Hank suggested. "That's one thing this job requires that people don't think about. I mean, really, what do we actually do on a stakeout? I can guarantee I'll be eating one too many McDoubles waiting for a perp to come out of a house."

Jo at last broke her tough trainee façade to offer a laugh. "It'll be gyros for me, they're my one street-corner weakness."

"Pretty little thing like you? I would've guessed you'd be the health-conscious cop with a homemade organic salad or something."

Partially as a joke, partially as revenge for the comment, and partially because the officers were too distracted to see her do it, Jo lightly punched Dunn in the arm. Her arm protested the swift movement, his protested the touch; but she was better at hiding the pain and grimaced behind a smug grin at the manly Dunn wincing from the attack on his already-strained muscles and tenderly rubbing the impact zone. She probably would've, no she _definitely_ would have added a witty comeback had not another, more senior, officer sprinted into the room and delivered the news that sent chills up everyone's spines.

{*****}

Caleb stood behind the podium, watching the elevator doors like a hawk. A slightly disinterested hawk that didn't necessarily care if it caught a rabbit that day or not. Most of the expected guests had arrived, and the few that were still to arrive weren't confirmed by their hosts anyhow, so he relaxed his posture, and in that exact moment, the elevator doors opened and deposited a nervous-looking thirty-something who dressed as if he were from another century. The man looked down to his golden pocketwatch, the lid of which caught the light from the overheat lighting and directed just shy of Caleb's eyes.

"Welcome to Windows on the World," Caleb offered, a little less professionally than usual. "Are you here with—?"

"The conference, yes. Dr. Henry Morgan."

"Ah." Caleb stepped from behind the podium. "Right this way, sir."

Caleb guided Henry to the large conference room that was occupied by financiers from all over the world. Both were concerned about walking in at an inopportune time, for the conference was about fifteen minutes from starting, and with the amount of briefcases and informational boards that had come in with the guests, they were apt to trip on something and enter gracelessly.

Two minutes later, that was the least of their worries.

{*****}

Henry had felt many an earthquake in his long life, but none had ever felt like this. He knew these skyscrapers would sometimes have a little bit of give to maintain stability with the changing wind currents, but this was neither wind nor tectonic plate at fault. Neither of those would throw him to the ground and have plates and glasses sliding off of the tables and shattering as they hit the floor. His mind flashed back to that fateful night almost a century prior, in the middle of the Atlantic aboard the unsinkable ship.

An extreme burst of heat shot up from the floors below, as if someone had gathered all of the heat in the world and directed it upon the center of the building. The heat radiated around them, never relenting in intensity, in fact, the longer it lasted, the hotter it felt. Tendrils of smoke came, first through the ventilation system, then seeping through the cracks in the floor, slowly enveloping the room, or so it seemed. All of this happened in a matter of seconds. Seconds that each lasted an eternity

Henry was in such a state of shock and confusion from the sensation that he'd just experienced that no coherent thought would come to his mind. Nor, did it seem, could anyone else think clearly. The young man that had led him into the restaurant looked up at him from where he lay on the floor.

"What the hell was that?" He whispered, eyes wide in panic.

"I don't know," Henry managed to mumble as he pulled himself upright. He extended a hand to the young man and pulled him up from among the broken glassware scattering the floor of Windows on the World.

"I mean, we don't get earthquakes in New York, do we?"

"Not in my experience, ah…?" Henry left the sentence hanging to coerce the man into introducing himself.

"Caleb. Caleb Conrad." The man offered, straightening his bow tie for the umpteenth time that day.

"Caleb." Henry repeated. "Pleasure to meet you, though I personally would have preferred less exciting circumstances."

Henry and Caleb then went about the room, mingling with the financiers as everyone asked the question: what just happened?

{*****}

" _What?!"_

That was the unanimous cry from the cops and trainees in the Queens facility. Denial began racing through everyone's minds. There was just no way. Airplanes don't crash into the World Trade Center. In a post-apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster, sure, maybe it was possible, but in real life? There was absolutely no way!

Jo and Dunn ran outside and looked toward Manhattan, firmly believing they would see two very tall, very intact Twin Towers rising above the skyline. Nothing, not even their worst imaginings, could have prepared them for the sight of smoke rolling out of the side of the North Tower. It was so far in the distance, normally they mightn't have been able to see the towers because of cloud cover. But September 11 had dawned a beautiful, cloudless morning. A beauty that was already completely and totally shattered.

"Oh my God," Jo whispered, watching the smoke pour down the side of the building and disappear into the city streets. She barely heard as almost, if not every, squad car on the premises whirred to life and drove off in a cacophonous chorus of sirens, the Doppler effect made all the more chilling with each vehicle that distanced itself from the training facility and advanced to the burning building.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, and she wasn't quite sure how her hand had come to be in Hank Dunn's, but honestly, she didn't care. She was mesmerized by the burning building, the smoke rolling down, the whir of a low-flying plane as it passed over her head and zoomed toward the city. It was almost as if it happened in slow motion, noticing the plane above, rationally realizing it was too low, watching helplessly as it took aim, shot into the South Tower and exploded in a giant fireball.

A shriek pierced her ears. She didn't remember opening her mouth, uttering the panicked noise, yet knew perfectly well that the scream had been her own. People swarmed around her, around Dunn, gawking helplessly at the burning towers. The few trainees that had remained inside were now running out to see if what the news stations had just broadcast had truly happened. They stood in silence for a few minutes, sending thoughts, reverence, and prayers accordingly to the people in the towers and the Powers That Be above, until the powers that be in charge of the city came and gathered the latest not-yet-New-York's-Finest into what was to be the biggest police effort of the city.

{*****}

"Do we have everyone in here?" A professional-looking woman, though clearly not one of the financiers, had shown up from somewhere in the restaurant and was quickly taking charge of the room. She stood at the podium that was supposed to be graced by the conference's speakers. It was difficult to see her, the gray smoke that had begun wafting up into the room was now a dense, thick cloud reeking of burning fuel. Before anyone could answer her query in the affirmative, she continued.

"My name is Amy, and I am the general manager here. I need everyone's cooperation to ensure that we handle this situation smoothly and efficiently. As you all know by now, there has been a terrible accident some floors below us. We are currently working on contacting the Port Authority forces to assess the situation and tell us where we can move safely. We promise to update you with any further information."

When the businessmen and women heard of the possible contact with Port Authority, they whipped out cell phones and BlackBerrys and began frantically calling anyone and everyone to let them know that, for now, they were alright.

Caleb desperately looked to Henry. "You don't happen to have a phone, do you?"

"Sadly, I've never found them useful, although I may have to rethink that philosophy considering the current circumstances." Henry sighed. "I would hope, though, that at least one of these ladies or gentlemen would allow you a call on their phone."

Caleb nodded and began walking among the financiers, leaving Henry free to approach Amy.

"What all do you know of the situation below?" Henry asked quietly, so only Amy could hear.

"I don't want to unnecessarily worry you, sir," She offered hesitantly.

"I must know if my services are needed below. I'm a doctor." He feebly replied.

Amy sighed, looking out the windows at the smoke rolling from below and down into the street. "Even if you were the greatest doctor in the world, there would be nothing you could do."

Henry circled around the woman, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder and brushing back her brown hair from her eyes. "And what makes you say that?"

Amy averted her gaze from the doctor's knowing eyes. "It was an airplane. A jet liner ran straight through the building below. There's no way down; we've tried all the stairs and found them impassable."

"What about the roof?"

"They can't land anything; the building's too compromised. I don't know how in the world we still have cell service, to be honest."

The building groaned once again, shaking the light fixtures and scattering dust from the ceiling about the room. Amy and Henry grabbed each other as an anchoring point, though it was fairly useless and they found themselves struggling to stay upright. When they had at last regained their footing, now covered in a fine layer of drywall dust, they turned to look out the windows just as another immense jet liner came all too close to their field of vision. They were just about to resign to themselves that this would be the end when the plane veered off course and rammed squarely into the face of the neighboring Tower.

The room collectively gasped in shock as they watched the fireball explode, felt the heat intensify above the already-insane oven-like atmosphere that had become the top floors of the North Tower. The room then collectively choked on the thickly-polluted air they had all simultaneously breathed in. Once everyone had cleared their lungs as best as they could, the restaurant management staff quickly convened and restored the room to order. Henry stayed close to Amy, and found Caleb staying close to him.

The young man handed Henry some sort of device that he did not recognize, but for being one of those newfangled technological communicators that he'd vowed never to use.

"It's that guy's," Caleb motioned to a man as well-dressed as the others, whose only distinguishing features were a gaudy paisley tie and large, round-framed glasses just barely _that_ side of out-of-style. Henry nodded his thanks and poised a finger over the number pad to dial—wait, that was a full-scale keyboard.

"Pardon my ineptitude," Henry nudged Caleb, who still stood beside him, "but could you tell me how exactly I call someone with this… thing?"

"You got invited to this meeting and you don't know how to use a BlackBerry?" Caleb asked incredulously. Henry was about to recant with the fact that he'd _just told_ Caleb that he didn't own or use a cell phone, but Caleb was already menu screens deep in the phone's computer system to a dialing screen.

"The numbers are in the right-had corner of the keyboard buttons. Dial like you would a regular phone. Hope you get through to 'em."

Henry took the BlackBerry in his hand and tapped out the phone number for his and Abe's apartment above the antique store. Of course, the phone continuously rang and rang. Abe was, after all, probably so absorbed in attempting to woo Farland's daughter to even have noticed that an airplane had just crashed into the side of the building where Henry had just gone to a breakfast engagement. Even if he had taken notice, there was no way he'd returned to the apartment in only half an hour. At last, the line stopped ringing and Henry's call was queued to the answering machine, which for appearances' sake, was a recording of Abe declaring the various specialties of the antique shop, including but not limited to estate sales, consignment, and 18th and 19th century authentication by the quote-unquote greatest authority on the subject, otherwise known as Henry Morgan.

It wasn't until that moment that Henry faced the moral dilemma in which his condition put him. No matter what happened today, he was going to survive. It was inevitable. The others around him, they were barely hanging on as it was. If what Amy had said was true, that there were no passable escapes, it was highly likely that Henry would be the _only_ survivor of this tragedy, whatever its cause may be.

Nonetheless, Henry was only human, and in such, he was scared as hell for what was going to happen in the burning restaurant. In fact, having already experienced almost every possible way to die in this situation - asphyxiation, incineration, crushing from the collapse of tonnage above, a quarter-mile free-fall onto solid ground – he was probably _more_ frightened. Only he knew what terrors still awaited the hundred or so people huddling in the less-smoky northeast corner of the restaurant.

"Abe?" Henry asked the empty shop on the other end of the line. "I'm still at Windows. Something's happened about twenty floors below—It's not looking good at all. You'll know where to find me."

He attempted to disconnect the call and surprised himself by succeeding, then went to return the BlackBerry to the paisley-tied man. As he pushed his way through the throng of people, he caught Amy's voice talking worriedly into her less-complicated cellular phone.

"We're losing air…" she nodded along to the instructions coming from the other end. "Alright. I'll call back soon for any updates."

"What now?" Henry asked discreetly as Amy pocketed the phone.

"They still don't have a way to access us. They've got fire and EMS on the floors below the impact but there's no way up here as of yet. Their best advice was to break a window to get some fresh air back in here." Amy sighed, looking across the crowd of people huddled in the corner, exchanging what information they could with the outside world. By now, word had reached everyone that the source of the explosion and fire was a hijacked jetliner that was deliberately crashed into the side of the building.

Everyone was calling their families, saying their last goodbyes or denying the need to. The air was quickly being used up, making the idea of breaking a window a more and more viable option.

Amy and Henry began to spread the word around the room about breaking the windows, which, even in this dire circumstance, warranted a debate amongst the financiers. Of course some were adamant that they needed fresh air _now_ , while others, those resigned to death, didn't want to raise any false hope of rescue. As the suits debated the issue, using more and more of the precious and highly flammable oxygen, Caleb made his way back over to Henry.

"We're not getting out of this alive, are we?"

{******}

All they could do was watch in horror.

Jo, Dunn, and the other NYPD trainees were left at the compound with only one or two officers keeping watch. No one would have cared if the trainees had left, and in fact, some of them had. Others were congregated along a line of payphones in the lobby space, frantically calling loved ones who worked in or near the Towers.

The rest remained in the large hall where, just an hour earlier, they had stood for roll. Televisions around the room and added to it by way of wheeled carts were all fixed to different news stations all reporting on the tragedy, and of course the scanner on the far right was exploding with activity. A report had just come in that the NYPD had cordoned off Lower Manhattan from any outside traffic because of the destruction.

One of the televisions suddenly blinked away from the image of the burning Towers, replacing it with the Pentagon. A now-four-sided Pentagon with a gaping, burning hole where the fifth side used to be.

There was absolutely no way that this was real life.

{*****}

"Somebody _please_ just throw something at it!"

The man with the paisley tie raised his voice over the cacophony of arguments. A chef grabbed a knife and aimed for the window, lodging the blade in the glass and creating a radial network of spidering cracks throughout the pane of glass. One of the financiers, with one arm outstretched behind him to ward off the others, swung his briefcase at the compromised glass, and with a loud shatter, sent glass spiraling 106 floors down, along with the briefcase, which he'd let go of as it made contact with the window.

Air rushed into the room, as if it had formerly been a vacuum of nothingness. And with that surge of oxygen into the building, the fire below began to rage even hotter.

Henry moved to the back of the crowd, avoiding the mad rush to the window and the sweet, sweet oxygen pouring in the gaping hole framed with jagged glass. He watched as others, now motivated by the first, slammed briefcases and tables and whatever they could into the windows of Windows on the World. A few took the opportunity to choose what they considered the lesser of two evils and joined the falling pieces of glass in their descent. Most remained cautiously on the edge of the shattered window frames, breathing the air from outside but holding tightly to the only ground available.

Caleb joined them, crawling between two of the restaurant's patrons to stick his head out into the wide open world. He inhaled a breath of the clearest oxygen he was going to get, as another heat wave rushed past his body.

He pulled himself back in. It was simply no use. Breathing the better air would only prolong what would already be a long and painful death.

Caleb found it infinitely easier to turn around and walk away from the people, from the windows, and make his way out of the crowd. At the back stood Henry, beside the most calm, cool, collected, and extremely indignant Amy he'd seen in his life. She had her cell phone to her ear again, lips pursed in reaction to what she was hearing on the other end, her knuckles white as they gripped the tiny device.

"She's not getting through?" Caleb asked Henry.

The doctor shook his head. "The trouble is quite the opposite. She's got them clear as day, they just don't have anything for us to do."

Caleb and Henry stood in silence, watching the others desperately claw for the air. A few of the others, equally resigned to fate, came back with them. About five or six were gathered in a circle off to the left, heads bowed in prayer. The other two restaurant managers huddled closer to Amy, hoping to pick up any tidbit they could from her conversation. The man with the paisley tie was back on his BlackBerry, typing furiously.

"Did you get through?" Caleb asked.

"Get through what?" Henry returned.

"Get through the line," the young man replied matter-of-factly. "To whoever you were calling."

"I left him a message." After a bit of an awkward pause, Henry reversed the question upon Caleb.

"Yeah. My girlfriend, Chelsea, she's in school at Pitt Johnstown. It was… it was surreal. There I am, telling her how much I love her and that I care, and I'm just thinking that this is all a huge nightmare. The words didn't feel like things I would say or that I would ever have to say. Not now, not here…" Caleb laughed, a tense laugh that tapered off into a dismal sigh. "I shouldn't be saying my last words, ya know? There's so much more _life_ out there that I haven't lived…

"I've been saving up for a ring… I was gonna propose to Chelsea this summer… I wanna get married, watch my kids grow up…" Caleb's voice broke with the emotion he'd been holding in ever since the plane had hit the tower. "I wanna get old. I want to get old and join a stupid bingo club and have to buy dentures and see where the world's going and die peacefully in my sleep!"

He was forced to stop, choking on a lungful of polluted air. A single tear slipped down his cheek; he wiped it away as he regained composure.

"Tell me about her."

Caleb looked at Henry, confused.

"Come over here, sit down against this wall, and tell me about her." Henry elucidated.

"But smoke is denser the closer to the ground you are."

A sorrowful expression came over Henry's face. He didn't want to have to describe this plan in detail to Caleb; it would be infinitely easier on the young man were he to not know the scientific reasoning behind Henry's request.

"I cannot promise you life. I cannot give you the years you wish to have. But a peaceful passing, perhaps. At least as peaceful as circumstances allow." Henry offered, sliding down the flaking drywall and onto the restaurant's carpet. "Now, sit down. Talk until you feel yourself begin to tire. Keep talking, talk until you can barely keep your eyes open. Talk until you fall asleep, and even then, don't stop. Talk in your dreams. Tell me of the happiest moments, the most beautiful, those that make you smile at the very thought of them."

"Talk myself to sleep." It wasn't a question, but neither were the young man's words a statement. He sat down next to Henry, not focusing on his ante-mortem counselor, but staring blankly ahead as he looked into the past. "April, 1999. She told me to just get in the car, no questions. Ended up taking me to this amazing overlook that had views across this river and the valleys and the mountains, and the colors of that sunset were more vibrant than anything I'd ever seen. But the best gift that night was just seeing her smile. What makes her happy is making other people happy. And she's damn good at it, too. She always knows what to say, bad day or good. And then you smile and she smiles and man, her smile's infectious…"

Even at the thought of Chelsea's smile, the corners of Caleb's mouth turned up. He turned to his right, where Henry was faking a smile of commiseration. The immortal was trying his best, really, but as much as he tried to follow his own advice for Caleb, he couldn't shake the thought of the guilt that he knew he would carry for eternity. The weight of the very idea that he would be the only one out alive scared him to death. If only it actually could scare him to _literal_ death, then the problem would be solved.

That was the trouble with being immortal. You'd get yourself into situations like this, and who was there to turn to when you were slammed with an attack of survivor's guilt? At least with the major tragedies he'd been involved in before, there wasn't total decimation. It was always, even if barely, plausible for him to have survived by natural means. There were other survivors to talk to, others who understood one's pain and fears and just the utter guilt of making it out alive when so many others did not. With this, even if people had survived below the crash site, which Henry thought highly likely, if not a bit optimistically, they would not have known the full terror of what was still to come.

The terror of being buried alive amidst a flaming furnace fueled by burning steel.

Which he watched with detached horror as, out the broken windows, the South Tower plummeted downward as if the earth opened up a perfectly Tower-sized hole and was simply swallowing it whole.

{*****}

The South Tower was gone.

And the panicked citizens were here.

Literally, hundreds of people were crowding into the Queens training facility. It had started with a few passersby asking if the phones were working; word spread, and then people just got curious. Others were going into the police barracks, why shouldn't they? Maybe they'd get more news before the TV stations broadcast it.

On top of all that, all of the citizens thought that Jo, Dunn, and the trainees were actual, full-fledged officers. Normally, this wouldn't have been all that much of a problem, except for the fact that she hadn't yet had her crisis training, and this was panning out to be the biggest crisis in NYPD history.

Jo had only ever thought about the part of police work that required her to keep her cool in the face of danger. She wasn't emotional like she'd been told a girl should be. She wasn't afraid in the face of danger. When faced with a fight-or-flight situation, she would pick fight, hands down.

Emotional territory was another thing entirely. Sure, she could hold her own, but everyone else's, too? And, of course, everyone made the assumption that because she was a woman that she would be better qualified for the emotional side of things. Being the only woman left among the trainees made it all the more difficult for her to pass on the role of consoler.

The one saving grace in all of this was Hank Dunn, who was actually a half-decent comforter. He stuck by her side and managed to actually verbalize the words that she could only think in the form of detached, numb emotion. He portrayed himself as being a lot more control than he actually was. Then again, saying that the emergency forces of the city were doing everything they could and then some was in no way a lie, simply a truth that the trainees could not fully corroborate.

Under the guise of needing to use the restroom, Jo managed to get away from all of the people, and seeing as there were no other decently empty rooms in the building, actually ended up there anyway. She looked up at herself in the mirror and, though they hadn't done a single workout yet, she looked as if she had run a marathon. Or something. Her hair was disheveled, her ponytail falling out and loose strands of brown curls haphazardly framing her face. The fact that she hadn't been wearing makeup was of no help to her haggard expression, brown eyes wide and weary yet alert from fear.

And now, any moment now, they were coming. As the officers traveled to the scene, they called back to the training base and alerted that they would be using it for relief and refuge. Whether that was survivors or first responders, no one knew. No one even knew if they would need it. No one wanted to think that, but it remained an unacknowledged entity in the shadows of everyone's minds.

And having more people flood in, more comfort to dole out, was something Jo could not even fathom. What could she even say? She, a woman barely past her twentieth birthday, what advice could she possibly offer? What comfort was there to give? She couldn't even tell them to drink it away, which was about the only thought she had at this point; she'd risk losing her chance at this job because she legally shouldn't know the infinitely momentary liberation brought on by alcohol.

Commiserating with a kid caught in the middle of a drug war, now that was something she could do. She understood the pain of losing someone you love because they had done something illegal—whether that loss was permanent or just to the county prison system for a time, that was familiar territory. Then again, she knew what it was to fear that someone innocent would be caught in the crossfire. Perhaps that's what this all was. Someone shooting at their enemy with no regard for those in the way. But with much, much larger ammunition and much, much larger consequences.

Maybe, just maybe, she could do this after all.

{*****}

Caleb's words became slurred with slumber. He subconsciously leaned over and rested his head on Henry's shoulder; the immortal made no move to move. Soon, Caleb's words were no more, and the young man slept with a peaceful expression, as if his dreams had really taken him to his Chelsea. It unlocked that paternal nature of Henry and he couldn't help but run his fingers through Caleb's hair as he slept. He released a little sigh of relief each time he felt Caleb's chest rise and fall, even though he knew death was inevitable. Henry's humanity, no matter how many times he died, would always remain in denial of his fatal situations. And if he ever managed to fight that part of himself off, Henry didn't want to face the mirror.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up to see the man with the paisley tie, extending his BlackBerry out to Henry.

"Someone named Chelsea, for him," The man nodded at the sleeping Caleb. He wondered how on earth someone could fall asleep at a time like this, yet was extremely jealous because of the peace falling asleep would bring to the situation.

"I'll take it," Henry said as he reached up for the phone. After establishing that Caleb was still asleep and not wanting to wake him, Henry offered a quiet hello.

"Where's Caleb? What happened? Is he okay?" the panicked woman cried at the other end of the invisible line.

"He's asleep, Chelsea. It would be best to leave him that way."

"You mean… he… he's…" her voice broke with a held-back sob.

"No. He is still alive." Henry tenderly replied. Hearing Chelsea sigh with relief on the other end, he mustered up the gall to speak the disheartening truth of the situation. "But passing in his sleep will be infinitely more peaceful than being aware of it, don't you think?"

Chelsea nodded. Of course, Henry couldn't see it, but he knew from the slience on the line that she simply couldn't face vocalizing the words.

"I wanted him to know I was okay… A plane crashed really close to the university I go to… and they think it was another one of them…

"I almost wish it had just hit campus, then I wouldn't… wouldn't feel like it's… it's just so unfair that I'm still alive…"

Henry felt the building beneath him tremble. It would be any moment now. "You know, just because he's asleep doesn't mean you can't talk to him. I'm putting the phone to his ear."

Henry did as he promised, then focused on nothing more than breathing in and out. He wouldn't have to do it much longer now. As the building continued to tremble, he felt Caleb breathe his last. He couldn't tell if Chelsea was still on the line, but he wasn't going to stop her. Even if he would have wanted to, Henry didn't get the chance. The clock struck 10:28 and his last thought was how much this sudden free-fall felt just like the way the neighboring Tower had fallen down… Sharp pain, not even enough time to cry out before being swallowed by the all-familiar black abyss.

{*****}

"Henry?... Henry?!"

Abe breathlessly searched the shop and the apartment for his father. He'd sprinted across the city, much to the chagrin of the police who were trying to shepherd everyone _out_ of Lower Manhattan, fearing every moment for Henry. He knew, of course, that history had proven itself on multiple occasions and that he need not worry about losing Henry in the Towers, yet he could never escape the fear that perhaps, just _perhaps_ , the mysterious immortality would wear off and leave him orphaned for the second time in his life.

Not to mention that, although Henry could never die, he could never get over the emotion of dying. And this, well, this was one hell of an emotional trainwreck of a death.

Abe began retracing his steps, as if somehow Henry could have snuck in behind him, and finally noticed the trail of white powdery ash that followed him. The macabre white dust coated his entire person. He rubbed a finger along his arm to see how thickly the dust coated himself, and in the process revealed the crude black tattoo he'd been forced into wearing.

He then noticed the blinking red light on the answering machine. He hadn't had one all that long and so wasn't yet accustomed to checking it. Tentatively, he pressed the play button and the little tape inside rewound to the correct place on the magnetic reel.

" _First message_ ," prompted the electronic feminine voice, who then was replaced by Henry. "' _Abe? I'm still at Windows. Something's happened about twenty floors below—it's not looking good. You'll know where to find me.' Tuesday, September 11, 9:34 AM."_

He was still in there. His father, his best friend, was inside the inferno of the World Trade Center. And even though he knew that Henry would ultimately be fine, in those moments, Abe was absolutely terrified for his father. He looked back out the shop windows, out to the dark gray clouds of smoke drifting over the city, watched as the Tower crumbled and sank to the ground. Then Abe grabbed the duffel bag that always remained behind the counter of the antique store and ran to the shores of the East River.

{*****}

The first thing he noticed was just how pure the air was. It occurred to him, though, that it wasn't any thinner here where he was now than it had been on the smoke-filled 106th floor. Then Henry came to his senses and remembered that he was naked in the East River.

He popped up out of the water and was momentarily confused as he looked to the New York City shoreline and saw smoke and fire and a curious lack of Twin Towers. And in that moment, all of the faces of the people he'd been trapped with flashed past his mind; the man with the paisley tie, Amy, Caleb… They were gone. And so should he be.

Yet here he was, just like every other single damned time he'd died. Alive and well and naked in the water. Nothing to show for it, not in the least.

And there was Abe, along the shoreline with a towel and the usual sad smile. For once it wasn't out of disappointment that Henry hadn't managed staying alive better, but from the tragedy still blowing smoke behind him and the guilt that stemmed from that of getting his father back alive when so many were lost.

Henry probably would've been alright, at least in the eyes of the law, had Abe not gotten the message and came, because none of the eyes of the law were finding it pertinent to watch for skinny-dippers in the East River. But emotionally… There was no way Henry could've walked back into that city without his son to hold on to.

He didn't speak for a month. His 222nd birthday passed without fanfare. Abe feared for a relapse of Abigail's disappearance, but Henry nary touched a bottle of cognac. He spent his days staring out at the empty spot in the city skyline, or writing furiously in his journals. Abe once snuck a peek, because, of course he was curious, Henry wasn't talking, maybe he would glean some information that would open his father's mouth again.

The journal didn't make sense. It didn't fit the clinical methodology Henry used when he documented his deaths; then again, none had been as emotionally fraught since the time he'd died in Abigail's arms. This journal read as a narrative. When Abe read further, he realized that he didn't recognize a single detail. Something about Chelsea and warm smiles and frosty winters and homemade hot cocoa…

{*****}

"It was my second day of training." Jo set her mug down, the warm coffee inside threatening to slosh over the rim. "The only thing that got me through that day was Dunn, honestly. That's why I was so adamant he was innocent on the Aaron Brown case. A guy that could comfort the surviving relatives of 9/11 wouldn't become a murderer, would he? And it was really hard to just stay behind when there were people that needed us, you know? I still get attacks of conscience over it."

Henry wished he could commiserate. Not that he couldn't, in fact, he knew for a fact that he had the most wrought conscience of any survivor who had escaped the Towers, because he'd survived where no one else had. Days like this, he absolutely hated his curse for letting him live and forcing him to fake a smile and offer a much more platitudinous attempt at commiseration than that which his mind and memories screamed he say.

In a way, it helped, working on the police force. That fateful day inevitably came up, no matter what. The amount of "Never Forget" posters around the precinct managed to numb the pain with their ubiquity. Yet he could never let his eyes wander to the top floor of the North Tower, or he would see in the shadows the faces of the people he'd met in the longest 102 minutes of his very long life.

* * *

 _Well, thank you all for reading. I put together Henry's experience in the tower from dozens of sources, mostly published accounts of those final phone calls. Caleb, Chelsea, and the man with the paisley tie are purely fictional; if they bear any resemblance to someone lost that day, it is entirely coincidental. Amy was a combination of all of the managers working at Windows that day, but was mainly inspired by Christine Olender, whose story I read on the website of a business partner of hers._

 _We can never forget this tragic day, and anything I say here will not be sufficient to memorialize those who lost their lives in the attack, whether in the towers, Pentagon, aboard one of the four airplanes, or the first responders who ran inside to save them. And I think I would be remiss not to mention the strength of the survivors of those attack, for keeping on and facing another day. I think we forget those who did make it out alive and live with that anguish that I touch on Henry experiencing after his return. So there, There is my tribute. Sorry it's not fantastic, but hey, it's something._

 _Also, I have no earthly idea what would've gone down at a police training facility. I completely and totally made everything up for that part of the story, sans the location. There was supposed to be more of a storyline there, but it ended up existing mainly to give an objective timeline of events. The shipping company to which Henry sold the Morgan family enterprise is real, and so is the company that acquired it. It was the only company with major influence today that actually existed long enough for Henry to have feasible made the sale. That whole part was a trainwreck, honestly. I just needed Henry to get to the Towers without anyone else involved._

 _Now I should stop telling you things about the story because this ayenn is longer than any other I've written and if I don't stop, I'll just keep rambling and that will be bad. Just look how gramatically irritating that last run-on was!_

 _until we get the DVDs Matt has promised and we see deleted scenes and feel the urge to add them to canon,_

 _Morgan(:_


End file.
